Trapped in the hour-long drama structure, the half-hour sitcom that The Mysteries of Laura might long to be never finds its footing.

The Mysteries of Laura

NBC probably thought it had found a bargain when it picked up The Mysteries of Laura. To the network, this one program could have appeared to be the case of getting three shows for the price of one: a police procedural, a cop comedy, and a family dramedy. Unfortunately for Debra Messing, who plays NYPD detective Laura Diamond, the three parts of this show are so tonally dissonant that it feels like she is playing three different characters in three separate series.

The first show of the three features Diamond as an earnest and dependable detective who solves crimes, neatly nailing the killer each week. Although The Mysteries of Laura is set in the present day, this part of it has its roots in the crime shows of the ‘70s and ‘80s. These cases may be murders, but they aren’t pushing the ick factor as we see so often in current versions of this formula. No need to analyze splatter patterns at the crime scene or bone shards back in the CSI lab. Victims die slumped over with bloodless wounds, and Diamond channels her inner Columbo to crack the case via otherwise overlooked clues and a simple process of deduction.

This pattern, however predictable, would be fine if The Mysteries of Laura let itself fully be a throwback, along the lines of some other recent basic cable shows such as Psych. Not every show has to be cutting edge; a little self-aware nostalgia is sometimes a welcome change. Of course, even nostalgia needs to be done well. In the pilot, which premiered 17 September, the murderer and the way he was unmasked were ridiculous and even insulting to the audience.

Such lack of attention to crime-solving details might occur because The Mysteries of Laura really wants to be the second show, an irreverent cop comedy with a millennial sense of humor. Diamond might be understood as quirky and cool, and the pilot tries to capture a randomness in the workplace, where officers swap non sequiturs, as if the show is hoping for a Parks and Recreation vibe. But, trapped in the hour-long drama structure, the half-hour sitcom that The Mysteries of Laura might long to be never finds its footing. Besides, that series is already on the air on another network, and it's called Brooklyn 9-9

The third show is a family dramedy in which Diamond is a struggling mom of twin pre-school boys with behavioral problems. She has a cheating husband (Josh Lucas), whom she is trying to divorce, but he doesn’t want to let her go. Unlike the workplace and procedural scenes, where the tonal inconsistencies make them hard to watch at times, the scenes of the detective at home with her family actually get you rooting for Diamond. She is adrift in a parenting dilemma with a partner who refuses to take it seriously. It also helps that these are the only scenes where Messing seems fully to inhabit her character. But The Mysteries of Laura doesn't help her. Like the husband, it seems unwilling to take the domestic situation seriously or to create any sort of persuasive reality.

It is a bit surprising, not to say a mystery, to see a show that is as internally conflicted as The Mysteries of Laura. For all the criticism of network TV, one thing that the system does well is spot and hammer out such conflicts before a series is picked up. A lot of bad shows make it to the airwaves, but they usually at least have a clear, if misguided, sense of identity. Maybe we’re just witnessing a new stage in the development process, an experiment using viewers' feedback to sort out whether the end product will be the cozy mystery, the hipster sitcom or the domestic dramedy.

Or it could just be a horrendous pilot. The second episode, which aired last Wednesday, suggested that the series is going with the old school procedural with just a touch of sitcom quirkiness and no family drama. This episode featured a bit of a shaggy dog story, following a string of potential murderers and implausible motives, but at least it had more internal consistency than the first. Still, after such a mess of a start, The Mysteries of Laura needs to make some decisions.

White Hills epic '80s callback
Stop Mute Defeat is a determined march against encroaching imperial darkness; their eyes boring into the shadows for danger but they're aware that blinding lights can kill and distort truth. From "Overlord's" dark stomp casting nets for totalitarian warnings to "Attack Mode", which roars in with the tribal certainty that we can survive the madness if we keep our wits, the record is a true and timely win for Dave W. and Ego Sensation. Martin Bisi and the poster band's mysterious but relevant cool make a great team and deliver one of their least psych yet most mind destroying records to date. Much like the first time you heard Joy Division or early Pigface, for example, you'll experience being startled at first before becoming addicted to the band's unique microcosm of dystopia that is simultaneously corrupting and seducing your ears. - Morgan Y. Evans

The year in song reflected the state of the world around us. Here are the 70 songs that spoke to us this year.

70. The Horrors - "Machine"

On their fifth album V, the Horrors expand on the bright, psychedelic territory they explored with Luminous, anchoring the ten new tracks with retro synths and guitar fuzz freakouts. "Machine" is the delicious outlier and the most vitriolic cut on the record, with Faris Badwan belting out accusations to the song's subject, who may even be us. The concept of alienation is nothing new, but here the Brits incorporate a beautiful metaphor of an insect trapped in amber as an illustration of the human caught within modernity. Whether our trappings are technological, psychological, or something else entirely makes the statement all the more chilling. - Tristan Kneschke

"...when the history books get written about this era, they'll show that the music community recognized the potential impacts and were strong leaders." An interview with Kevin Erickson of Future of Music Coalition.

Last week, the musician Phil Elverum, a.k.a. Mount Eerie, celebrated the fact that his album A Crow Looked at Me had been ranked #3 on the New York Times' Best of 2017 list. You might expect that high praise from the prestigious newspaper would result in a significant spike in album sales. In a tweet, Elverum divulged that since making the list, he'd sold…six. Six copies.

Under the lens of cultural and historical context, as well as understanding the reflective nature of popular culture, it's hard not to read this film as a cautionary tale about the limitations of isolationism.

I recently spoke to a class full of students about Plato's "Allegory of the Cave". Actually, I mentioned Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" by prefacing that I understood the likelihood that no one had read it. Fortunately, two students had, which brought mild temporary relief. In an effort to close the gap of understanding (perhaps more a canyon or uncanny valley) I made the popular quick comparison between Plato's often cited work and the Wachowski siblings' cinema spectacle, The Matrix. What I didn't anticipate in that moment was complete and utter dissociation observable in collective wide-eyed stares. Example by comparison lost. Not a single student in a class of undergraduates had partaken of The Matrix in all its Dystopic future shock and CGI kung fu technobabble philosophy. My muted response in that moment: Whoa!

Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell at St. Mark's Church in New York City, 23 February 1977

Scholar Christopher Grobe crafts a series of individually satisfying case studies, then shows the strong threads between confessional poetry, performance art, and reality television, with stops along the way.

Tracing a thread from Robert Lowell to reality TV seems like an ominous task, and it is one that Christopher Grobe tackles by laying out several intertwining threads. The history of an idea, like confession, is only linear when we want to create a sensible structure, the "one damn thing after the next" that is the standing critique of creating historical accounts. The organization Grobe employs helps sensemaking.